By Adam Kramer
Even though the Queens representatives on the City Council’s Government Operations Committee did everything in their power to repeal term limits, the committee killed the proposed legislation by a slim margin of 5-4 and left it virtually dead in the water.
The committee’s vote prevented the bill, which was sponsored by 22 council members and would have overturned the city’s term limit law — from going to the full city council, where the sponsors were just four votes short of a majority. The measure would have then been sent to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who had not said whether he would sign or veto the bill.
“I believe this ends it,” said City Council Speaker Peter Vallone (D-Astoria). “Time has pretty much run out, and I hope this debate sparks the interest of people to come out and vote.”
The three Queens council members on the committee who voted to repeal term limits were John Sabini (D-Jackson Heights), Juanita Watkins (D-Laurelton) and Julia Harrison (D-Flushing).
Vallone, who is not in favor of term limits, had opposed the bill on the grounds it was not good government and that passage of the measure would fly in the face of the people who had voted in two referendums to restrict the number of consecutive terms elected officials could serve in the city.
If the bill had passed the committee. the full Council would have needed 26 votes to pass it, which would have overridden the term limits law enacted after voter referendums in 1993 and 1996.
The law, which permits council members only to serve two consecutive terms, will prevent 35 of the 51 council incumbents from seeking re-election. Queens is hardest hit by the term limits law since the borough is losing all 14 members of its city council delegation to term limits.
Sabini told the public gathered for the committee hearing last week he was voting for the bill to repeal term limits because as a city council member it is his job to “make things better” for the city, Queens and his constituency.
“In Queens, not one of our public officials will be in that position on Jan 1, not one council member, the borough president or the comptroller,” he said. “I don’t think that is better. I believe the way the law is set up is wrong and I cast my vote to make things better.”
Watkins, who agreed with her Queens compatriot, said contrary to what the media had been writing and what had been said, the council members who had put forth the bill to repeal term limits did not do so because they could not find another job.
“I must have been doing some meaningful work before I was elected to the council,” she said. “My vote is not to do the same thing or to keep Watkins in a job. I took care of that before the City Council. Term limits is bad policy.”
Harrison, the third Queens politician on the Government Operations Committee and the first to vote, did not explain why said voted “yes” to repeal term limits.
After the vote, the committee approved a “motion to file” the bill by a 5-4 margin, which means the bill cannot be forced back into committee or on to the council floor. The full City Council must vote on the “motion to file” at its next meeting on March 28.
After the vote, Councilman Archie Spigner (D-St. Albans) said, “term limits are terrible” and the Council will lose a lot of institutional knowledge, but “the city has a way of surviving these kinds of disruptions and this is a severe disruption.”
The fourth council member to vote in favor of the bill was Lloyd Henry (D-Brooklyn).
The five council members to vote against overturning term limits were Mary Pinkett (D-Brooklyn), Stephen Fiala (R-Staten Island), Eva Moskowitz (D-Manhattan), Philip Reed (D-Manhattan) and Adolfo Carrion Jr. (D-Bronx).
Queens council members who had sponsored the bill were Helen Marshall (D-Elmhurst), Watkins, Sabini, Harrison, Walter McCaffrey (D-Woodside), Al Stabile (R-Ozone Park) and Thomas White (D-Jamaica).
Reach reporter Adam Kramer by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
